


The Mothership Zeta Problem

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fluff, Free Charon, Mothership Zeta DLC, Rape/Non-con Elements, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:38:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: They watched it stutter across the sky as it cut through clouds, leaving waves of white behind. It landed off somewhere behind the red glowing horizon. A mile or two away, through empty wasteland, but she insisted. She wanted to see, explore, know what it was. Charon knew, even if he wasn't certain at the time what it really was, but he knew it wasn't safe. Safe was an antonym for her, but this? This was one of those times he should have just argued with her. *Liberal creative use of the Mothership Zeta DLC, with lots of questionable scenes. This one's gonna be a bit dark.





	1. Introduction

“Holy shit...” she gasped.

  
That was the understatement of the century. There lying by it’s fallen craft was a fucking alien. In all his time he’d never seen anything like it, but he’d have recognized that illuminating ammo anywhere, maybe not the gun, but that blue-tipped luminescence was unmistakable. One of the many traders that’d come into Underworld years back had some on him and like all valuable things Ahzrukhal got his hands on them. Even the old rat bastard knew they weren’t from this world, but now Charon was looking at the proof of that theory.

“Clem,” he warned, watching her slide from behind him to stomp down the rocky slope to the moss-splattered alien and its wrecked craft. Of all the times for her to ignore the rules of engagement, she chose this one. That weak vault bred immune system of hers could implode from whatever was down there. Which in truth, was at the very least of his top five concerns.

Charon growled, but said nothing, knowing it would do little to no good when she was like this.

It was low noon and the sun was still dimmed with clouds - it made him wary as if they’d stopped in an open plain. The blanket of clouds would provide an excellent cover for more of them. More of what? - more fucking aliens. Did she not realize what that meant? No, of course, she didn’t. Spending one's whole life not seeing the sky doesn’t leave you with much knowledge on fanatic extraterrestrial stories.

“This place is not safe,” he tried, following her; head shifting in all directions, especially up. His skin, what was left remaining, itched. His sixth sense was on fire. Something besides the dead alien corpse and its luggage was amiss. There was a siren in his head he couldn’t find the source on and it was making his jaw click with stress.

“You always say that,” she singsonged. One of her boots tapped at the broken helmet of the alien, it’s shriveled up head sunk in where the glass was busted. The atmosphere must have exuded too much pressure for the creature to handle. There didn’t seem to be any gore but a splattering of green, diseased- looking blood.

When he cautiously stopped beside his employer she ‘shushed’ him as if he was some chatty Cathy. Charon could hear her mind running at full speed as she crouched down beside the alien’s fallen weapon. It looked like something out of the old sci-fi flickers he’d seen with a pre-war employer, which left a dozen more questions than it did answers.

“I think this time you can humor me. Whatever that is,” he pointed, “isn’t from this planet.”

“I know!” she practically squealed, and his employer was not a girl to...squeal.

“Isn’t is awesome?! It’s like something out of those comic books I sto-bought off Butch. Crazy.” She was way too excited about this, and honestly, he hadn’t figured out how to pull her away from something that caught her attention yet. It was either she ignored him or he spent the whole time arguing with her, or at her since she rarely responded to him when her hands were too busy fondling some inane object. The future before him was bleak no matter which way he went about it.

“Just relax. It’s dead isn’t it.”

Charon snorted in response.

While she was marveling in the dirt he surveyed the area, catching a blinking light inside the busted cockpit. It was blue - the same hue as the cylindrical ammunition scattered around the crash site, but its shape was oblong and the center of light pulsed, catching and forming a dot on the left side. It reminded him of a radar, but...

“Clementine, we need to go.”

She didn’t answer, and until he turned towards her, he hadn’t thought anything of her silence. Often she ignored his urgent demands over her own protected. But this time when he went to grab her he paused, brow tightening in confusion. She stood, half crouched and draped in a crisp blue light. He had one short second to look up - to see the arch of light that pierced into the clouds before his instinct caught up with him. Panic sank in like a knife between his lungs as he leaped to grasp her, meeting a swath of sizzling pain as his arms sank under the light to wrap around her waist. She was paralyzed; body rigid against his tightly wound muscles and rough, desperate pulls. Only her clothes cooperated, ripping at the shoulder of her jacket and the side seam of her undershirt.

Charon felt vomit fill his mouth with the sudden panic and pain in his arms and chest - the blue light burned deep into his bones.

He rounded on her, yelling senseless words as the pain receptors in his brain overloaded under the blinding light. Suddenly a boom erupted above his head, disrupting the layer of clouds like a shockwave and with it, her body began to rise out of his reach. Before her ankle slipped out of his hand, taking with him her right boot, he saw the open-eyed horror spread across her face. And then...just like that, she was gone and so too was that blue light, leaving him to stand there in the dust and rubble with her boot cradled in his hand, frozen.


	2. Highway to The Stars

“Morning, Star-shine.”

That, which was probably a gentle voice, felt like a herd of fucking Brahmin stampeding outside her shack house. Waking up to dull pain behind her eyes was never a good sign, tears also were never good, it ruled out a night of binge drinking, unfortunately. Though from the solid, uncomfortable surface underneath her it seemed likely she’d passed out in Gob’s Saloon...also not a great sign.

“Hey! You...get up already. Enough pleasantries.”

The pain of that voice...kill her now and be done with it.

Clem groaned, felt another shocking layer of pain as her vocal chords vibrated in her throat. What had she drunk? Turpentine? 

Through a layer of sticky tears she cracked open both eyes; the left one opening before the right. A room drenched in sharp light greeted her like a long-forgotten adversary. She hated light. The light was an enemy to any binge drinking simpleton, which it would appear she’d become.

A dusky woman, draped in typical wasteland gear and a strange expression was staring at her, sitting with one leg up against a bright white wall. 

There was a moment, before her eyes realized how unfamiliar her surroundings were, that she thought she recognized the woman looking over at her, but even through a headache and haze, she knew there was something wrong - more pressing matters to attend to than a simple meet and greet and that question after blacking out of ‘where the fuck am I?’

“Where,” she began, throat so raw and sore she couldn’t continue. It was just as well. Memories, fresh ones, came back like a creeping poison. Aliens, bulbous headed and all too inquisitive. Barks, short and high-pitched snaps of conversations she didn’t understand. Flooded with drugs. 

She’d felt panic before, but these memories that came seeping back in were nothing like that mild panic and terror she’d previously known. The helplessness and wrought confusion made her lose consciousness as much as whatever they’d given her had, but the darkness hadn’t come quick enough to escape the hiss of the drill - that mechanical arm, laced with malicious intent....aiming for her eye. Had it been the pain in the end that put her under? There was a mild recollection of hearing her own blood filling her brain but that may have been a nightmare, surely that wasn’t real...surely even if it was a real memory it’d have been best to ignore it, lest she lose herself in it.

There was a time and place for everything, but right now was the wrong time; wrong place.

Sitting on the cold, slick floor, she slowly took a finger to the corner of her eye. What she’d previously thought to be tears, came away red and thick on the immaculately clean pad of her finger. Blood. She was leaking. Crying blood. A wave of fresh panic coursed through her, and immediately she stood to her feet, and almost as quickly lost her balance. Clem wanted to run. A reasonable reaction she realized in a moment of clarity. Normally panic meant she was being hunted, in danger. Running was reasonable. 

There was no running right now.

Four white walls surrounded her, curving upwards almost imperceptibly, encasing her in a dome of pure white hell.

Running would do nothing but she ran anyway. Her knee bent back like jelly, and it was in the center of the room that she collapsed, paralyzed. Oh god, she was fucking crippled...

“Yeah, I tried doing that one too. Whatever they gave us fucked with our legs. Thought I was coming out of a jet binge. Trust me, by the time this shit is over, we’ll have wished they’d killed us.”

Better off. Paralyzed. She was fucked. So, so fucked and better off dead. She blacked out again after that little welcome party. Some sick, bitter laughter following her into the darkness.

\--------------------------------------------

Five minutes later, that was all the time he gave himself to simmer in regret and shock. After those short, mindless five minutes Charon started tearing the landing sight apart. Using the broken remains of the crafts own hull to further shred it, ripping open panels and gutting a post-crash hole in its side. Spit coated his chin and sweat he hadn’t realized he could excrete ran down his face. The compulsion he normally felt coming from the contract drove him, as well as another feeling - a feeling that a few months ago was completely foreign. He had to get her back, had to save her from whatever they were doing to her, and his only way to do that would be to find something on this ship. 

Suddenly he stopped, realizing he was actually ruining his chances. Destroying the ship would do no good. He was being idiotic to a greater degree than he’d been in decades. This was reckless and a poor use of the limited emotions he’d let run him in that moment. 

“Fuck!”

It was almost comical how, at the remnants of his cursed shout, he saw a button, red and covered in a half circle of cracked glass. It could have been anything but he had a sudden feeling of relief as he stepped into the tiny cockpit and slammed his fist through the cover of thin glass, to the red button. 

Nothing happened except the warm welling of blood pooling under his fist. He could feel a thin shard of glass stuck inside the contracted muscles in the heel of his hand, yet his didn’t remove it. Charon swallowed the pain, using it to clean the chaos in his mind - the pull to his employer. That untouchable itch in his brain when an employer was in pain - in danger - fuck with him until he found himself pressing that sliver of glass deeper into his fist, relishing the pain over the itch.

Five minutes later, the same thing; nothing. 

He sat in that fucking cockpit, his ass barely fitting inside until nightfall came, where he waited still for that blue light to take him up. The itch had faded for a while before it awakened again, lasting long enough that he punched a hole in the console, shredding his knuckles, maybe breaking a bone judging by the dull, heavy throb that persisted even while he lost himself in a cigarette.

“I’m going to kill them” he muttered around the smoke, staring hatefully at the red button. He slammed the heel of his boot down on it in spite a few times earlier, and now it was buried under the faceplate of the controls, only one of its edges poking free. He’d fucked it up again....

The cherry on his smoke was the only illumination he had. The moon was shrouded in black clouds and the reassuring light of Clem’s pipboy had flown away with her. He was stranded as only a lone man on an island could be. Without her, and his contract he was doomed to stay here and wait for her. No food, no water...no annoying and yet oddly comforting female company. She was gone, and he felt just as empty as he’d felt before she first took him in. More empty...

He smoked the cigarette down to his lips, uncaring at the heat that burned his scars. What else was left? What did a burn matter now? What did anything matter anymore? Charon swallowed, focusing on the pain and willed something to happen.

Nothing.

“You’ve fucked it up. The one thing you were supposed to do and you failed.” He let out a tired, beaten sigh, letting his eyes scan the blue-black of the crash site. Buried halfway down in the sand poked forth a few energy cells, or whatever that ammo was called. It pulsed with its blue glow, mocking him. 

When curiosity, boredom and the lack of anything to do but regret, he stood and wandered over to them, cradling his obviously broken hand by his side - every step torture. Charon bent down and brushed the sand away, uncovering more. They cast their sick light around him, illuminating the lone gun on the ground. Eyeing the gun hatefully he grumbled and lit up another cigarette to ease a sudden growing apprehension. It took a few attempts - the flame shaking in front of him. 

When his apprehension didn’t ebb with the rush of nicotine he reached for the gun, plucking it from the sand with his good hand. 

A thick sound filled his head - the soft buzz of electronics vibrating his skin. The blue rays shrouded him instantly, and just like that he was frozen staring a the gun in his hand, passed the paused glow of his cigarette.

Crouched down low, he was lifted slowly - the ground leaving him, growing smaller and smaller. That fallen craft eventually becoming just a black dot on the surface of the earth. Clouds passed him in smoke trails. The moon broke through, as did the glare of the sun, followed by the ink of space, dotted with distant stars. Despite his terror and the realization that he had yet to completely fuck everything up, he managed to feel a great encompassing awe as he stared down at the dark side of the world. 

Across the lip of the planet, he saw light stream perfectly, marking the space between night and day. Though it looked nothing like what he’d seen in pictures, it was beautiful. The barren wastes of the planet almost made his heart soar, though, just as the itch was receding and his body was going numb with the sights and realizations, the real darkness came.

\------------------------------------------------------

“You need me to go over it again, Star-shine? You couldn’t look any more fuckin’ lost ya’ know. It ain't chemistry.”

Clem shook her head, eyes trained up through the pane of glass above their heads. For the third time, she’d noticed the conveyor passing over them, holding nothing in its claws this go around. Even through the layers of their cell, she’d heard the last victim screaming; voice pealing through glass and metal not of this world, reaching her ears, expanding that wrought sense of fear and ineptness. She could be next. Was that comforting to know her hell would soon be over or terrifying?

“Well,” the women stressed, patience thin, “quite your gawking then, come over here and hit me you dumb bitch!”

Once more she swept the room, finding and seeing nothing but the crass woman before her, fists curled loose and ready beside her face. If this was the only plan the woman could come up with, better this than the nothings she’d drawn up. It would either end with an early death or an escape and those results were betting than hanging around waiting for the devil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment or a kudo if you have the time. More on the way.


	3. Freedom

 

“Woah,” Sally mouthed almost quietly.

They’d brought in another one of those skinless monsters, but this one was huge! He was like the size of the drones, but he had legs of course. Maybe the aliens would cut his legs off and replace them with the whizzy-around things. For some reason, that didn’t seem very cool, though. Replacing his hands with guns! Now that would be fun!

But they didn’t seem to like that idea. She’d never seen anyone put in the stand-up table before, that’s where all the worst machines were - the ones they’d used on her. The ones that looked like giant centipedes with drills and saws on the ends. They hurt bad, but maybe they’d open up a spot in his head like they did hers, then they could talk. She’d never seen one of the zombies talk before. 

They started to gather around, clapping and waving about. The worst machine lowered - the one with the wires and three rotating drills - and just then she saw the monster’s eyes snap open. He didn’t look like the other ones. He knew what was about to happen like she had. 

He was scared. Poor zombie...

The straps around his head tightened and his eyes rolled around in fear, centering in on the drills aiming towards him. They wouldn’t give him anything for the pain, just like they didn’t give anything to her. They were going to poke inside his brain while he was awake.

Silently she eased back down below the grates, nestling beside a warm pipe. Seeing the other things get chopped up didn’t matter much, it was kinda cool, but he screamed like a man when the drill went in him, and that made her sick.

She fell asleep to the grunts, finding that after awhile they sounded like music. The steady hum of the engines and the sticky heat of the pipe was relaxing, and when she cracked her eyes open it was quite aside from the chatter of the ship.

They were gone when she peeped through the grate, but the zombie was still there; a white strap around his head that had turned red on two sides. He looked bloody and tired, but his eyes were still open and he was looking over at her. For a second she was afraid. She hadn’t been afraid in forever.

“Come out...”

She felt like a little rabbit in a hole; fingers shaking as she twisted the bolts, releasing the grate. Gently she pushed it against the outer wall and crawled out. He couldn’t hurt her, he was too sleepy, and the machines had ‘fucked him up’ as Timmy used to say.

“I think they took some stuff out of your head Mister Z-Man,” she said, crawling on hands and knees towards him. She didn’t want to get too close to the machines. They looked asleep, but who knew when they’d wake up. Staying low to the ground was always good sneaking skills.

He looked around like he’d lost something. Obviously, he was remembering because when he looked at the machine she saw his chest heave and his breathing get loud. His eyes, milky-looking, darted around.

“I think they’re done with you for now. They normally try not to kill the things they bring up here.”

“They...?”

“Yeah, the aliens. What did you think they were?” she giggled, seeing how confused he was. Even she knew what they were when she first saw them. Why did everyone else not get it? 

Looking around, making sure the coast was clear, she stood up and walked around him. He looked down at her, looking like he wanted to say something, so she said something before him.

“So, how come you talk? Those other monsters just act like zombies from the comic books. Are you from another planet? Is that where they got the idea from!?”

He shut his eyes tightly, turning his head away and jerking one leg against the straps. He wasn’t gonna get out without her help. And he’d have to ask nicely, but first, he had to answer her questions. She missed talking to those that talked back, even if they looked weird.

After a long while, he gave a weird growl and looked down at her, sighing, “I’m a ghoul. When the bombs fell some of us turned...”

She absorbed his words and nodded in understanding after a while. It made sense something like that would happen.

“You’re from before the war aren’t you?” he mumbled.

She perked up at that, fisting her shirt and grinning up at him, “Born in Springvale, Washington! I lived with my Mama, Papa and Sister, my cat Felix and I had a neighbor named Timmy. My sister and I came up here together. We liked to catch toads in the backyard, but mama said I’d get warts! One time-”

He looked scared again so she stopped, looking over at the tray he was eyeing. There were a bunch of bloody cords in a dish, swimming in red water. Some of it looked like worms attached to a little black box, but the worms were dead. Dead jelly-worms.

“Woah, did they take that outta your head, Mister?! That's so weird ‘cause they put stuff in my head and what they took out just looked like pink cauliflower. You sure got one messed up head.”

Suddenly he vomited and she jumped back. “Ew! Hey, that’s that milky stuff they put in your stomach. It's supposed to show them what’s inside of you. It’s gross isn’t it?”

“Something...not right...my head...”

“Yeah it’s gonna feel weird for a while, but you’ll get used to it. I kinda like my head the way it is now. Here! - let me get you outta there. Promise not to hurt me, though. I know kick-boxing.”

She disappeared around the back, looking for the white panel that blinked at her when she peered into it. Awhile ago she realized if she took one of their bits of metal and poked it around the little buttons on the screen it would shut down, so she poked and poked until something happened. A heavy ‘plunk!’ and a groan told her she’d done it right yet again. 

She was a genius.

“So, you’re really big and all. You can’t follow me, but I can open some doors for you. I know how to get to the control room too! You wanna see the ship? It’s really pretty when They’re not shooting at you and all.”

“I need...a minute...”

“Your voice is really rough. I can get you some water!” She darted around the room, opening up cabinets and drawers as quickly and as quietly as possible. After a while, she found the pouch. He drank it down, a lot of it spilling down his face. It was really wasteful.

“I need to find Clem...”

“Who’s that?”

“My employer. She’s....here... Where is she?”

“Well if she’s not in here she’s in the rooms. Mine is big! Really big and boring. She’s probably really bored. Let’s go find her! It’ll be fun!”

\------------------------------------------------------

So he followed her. There wasn’t much of a choice, but he couldn’t walk around without a weapon. He’d seen the guns they’d had, pointed right at him. And whatever the things were that’d shocked him into oblivion he didn’t want to repeat again. The water helped, but his throat felt rawer than it did when he’d chugged that old scotch him and Clem had found a few weeks prior. 

The stainless steel dish with whatever had been in his head stared at him out the corner of his eyes as he moved around the room; sluggish and sore in places he hadn’t know he could feel. They’d stripped him down to his waist, a shiny, white plastic sheet stuffed in the hem of his pants, covered in drops of blood and yellow bile. He ripped it off with a growl and palmed a compartment that looked almost like a trunk. When it didn’t open the girl walked up to him and smacked the side of it. It opened and low and behold all his shit was inside.

She followed him around like there was some invisible cord attaching them, and when he looked down she was staring at different parts of him. Her curiosity, though innocent it seemed, embarrassed him like his own skin hadn’t in decades. Only Clem had ever made him care what he looked like. Thinking about her made his heart race - a feeling that felt utterly foreign and at first made him wonder if he was having a heart attack. A first for a ghoul he figured. 

“That’s a big gun! You gonna shoot them with it?” She gaped, hands on the lip of the trunk, eyeing his shotgun with rapt interest.

“Yes,” he confirmed, feeling the weight of it in his hands again made him feel less empty than before. There was still something wrong with his head, and though he enjoyed the idea of living in denial, they removed something from him...and it was still staring at him on that table, in that dish. 

He knew what it was.

“Oh cool! There are grenades in here. I’ve seen these around the ship before, but the Aliens don’t seem to care about them. One time I threw one down a pipe and something exploded. They still don’t know it was me.” She looked really proud of herself, and oddly enough he felt himself smirking. 

The kid was different. He guessed she’d have to be to survive on this ship for so long. Time hadn’t aged her a bit it seemed or maybe time didn’t follow the same laws as it did down below. He felt, for a moment, like he belonged up here. In a place where time stopped with him, instead of leaving him behind.

“When my head hurts they usually give me this stuff.” She appeared next to him with what looked like a power cell at first glance. She wiggled it at him, then without warning, immediately jabbed the pronged end into his stomach. He howled, and jerked away, almost slapping her with the butt of his shotgun. The cell was stuck in him, but the glow was receding, flooding him with whatever had been inside.

“Fuck.” A great wave of relief washed over him - no side effects, no dizziness he’d come to expect from a stimpack. It was like getting blasted with a warm haze of radiation, but instead of the prickling warmth, his body cooled. It was at once pleasant and refreshing. 

“You’re welcome! You can probably take off that bandage now. I think they forgot to do it for you.”

He unraveled the bandage from his head, staring down at the dabs of dried blood - the sight reaffirming that his insides had been tampered with. When he looked up, he saw the x-rays. Littered among the walls were screens of his brain, his stomach, his bones, everything. He studied each one, hearing the girl's steps follow him across the room. 

It looked like he’d had tubes, chips and tiny black dots inside his head, making his brain look like a piece of scrap metal. A rolling sense of nausea lunged into his throat and he turned around, expelling more of that acrid white juice all over the floor.

“Gross. If you keep doing that they’ll be able to follow us back to your girlfriend.”

He groaned, willing the rest of it out, and sure enough, he vomited again, feeling the raw emptiness caressed his stomach. A mild sensation of vertigo clung to him before evaporating. For having his brain fucked with he felt fine after the white shit was out of his system. He could even honestly say he felt better than he had in a long while.

When he peered down at the girl she was kicking her feet, bored. 

“You said,” he swallow down the taste in his mouth, “you could take me to Clem, get us to the control room.”

She nodded, grinning.

“Is there a way off this ship?”

“Well sure there is, but you’d have to kill a lot of them to get off, I don’t think they’d like that very much and the Captain’s real mean.”

“I bet he is.” Charon fingered the fresh scars around his head. He was sure he looked more a monster now than before, but Clem never seemed to mind. What was one more scar on a canvass like his?

“Take me to her,” he said, checking the ammo in his shot gun before shrugging on his armor, strapping it on bit by bit. As the girl jumped up and down, giddy at his command, he clipped grenades to his belt and stuffed slugs in every pocket on his body. This was a war, and whether he’d win or lose, he was getting Clem off this ship.

“By the way! My name’s Sally.”

She was staring up at him, her tiny hand held out for him to take. It was pink and clean and suddenly he realized he’d never been around a child before. He tried to give her a smile, hoping it didn’t look too ghastly and grabbed her tiny hand in his own.

“Charon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those that read, commented and left kudos. Means a lot to me and my cluster fuck thoughts. Leave a comment if you have the time. Thank you kindly and more on the way.


	4. Innocence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see the previous chapter for the new update as of 11/11. I accidently posted out of order like a twit. Hope my fuckup doesn't ruin anyone's enjoyment too terribly.

The blood rushed down her nose like a broken pipe, but she denied the urge to swallow it, letting it flow down her chin and neck, staining the white tank stuck to her with fearful sweat. Better out than in her Father always said, she thought of him as she hung her head forward. Getting blood-sick now would just be one more flaw in the plan. 

Besides, there was something grounding the warm pain. 

“I hear them coming. Hit me!” The woman named Somah demanded; urged. 

She blew her nose instead, hanging her head low as the blood splattered on the floor and all over her shirt. Some of it dribbled down the back of her throat making her gag. The pain mattered little. Her head hurt way too much to register a broken nose.

“Hit me you stupid bitch!”

When the door opened on the edge of her vision she flinched, almost forgetting the plan; almost cowering in a corner. 

Somah rushed in head first...literally. She watched the ebony woman slam her head into one of the stunned aliens. 

The creatures pained screech finally cleared her head, and like a fucking feral, she followed Somah’s lead, rushing them with fists raised, pummeling their heads; their soft, unnatural heads. One of them went down, green oozing from a head wound. For some reason, the sight reminded her of juicy mutfruit, and her stomach growled as she caved it’s head in with her naked foot. 

Out the side of her vision, she saw Somah slamming her heel down on one of their heads as well, green sludge splashing out and staining her bare feet in a warm, sticky mess. It distracted her enough that the third one came behind her without notice, jabbing that stun-stick into her lower back. Instantly she went down and puked. 

White liquid, with red blobs swimming in it, painted the floor and she shivered in fear again. Another jab under her arm sending her into her own vomit with a sharp gasp. It wasn’t that it hurt so much as it took her breath away, made her limbs feel atrophied and numb.

Somah’s body rushed past her in a dark blur, and for a second she thought the woman would leave her, but a sick squelch of noise spoke of another alien meeting the floor.   
Then, just as it became quite a rough, thin-fingered hand grabbed her arm and hefted her up on her knees.

“Let it out. That shit fucks with your system.” She smacked her on the back hard and Clem puked again. The stuff burned her throat and made her skin feel hot where it had soaked through her clothes. Before she knew it Somah was yanking the disgusting tank over her head, baring her upper half. She was too sick to protest, and even then she knew it was a favor Somah was stripping her. That white shit was burning her skin, her gums, throat, and tongue like gasoline.

She was pushed to her hand and knees, dark fingers hooking into her shorts, pulling them down in a hurry. Suddenly, she was fucking naked and her damp skin was on fire.   
“It’s eating a hole in me,” Clem whispered; fear and pain lacing her clogged voice.

“I think you’ve had it in your stomach too long. I saw a guy spill his guts cause that stuff ate through him. But he’d been around for days before that happened.”

She shivered in the cold air, knees banging together. Somah pushed her back against the wall and there she slumped as the woman took the clean portions of her clothes to wipe down her body of the searing vomit. 

“You got it all out of you?”

“I don’t know...”

“Then get it out. Or I’ll punch you in the gut again.”

Shaking from the rush of sickness and the cold she hunched forward and stuck two fingers down her throat, wincing at her own fingers on the rawness inside. She gagged twice before burping up another mouthful of it. She did it for another minute, tears leaking out of her eyes until nothing else came up. The fear started to recede as the realization it was all gone soothed her.

“They pumped you full of that shit, didn’t they? Must have been real interested in you.”

Standing there, naked and burning - carcasses of aliens surrounding them - she finally came to a point in her life where her own pride mattered not. 

Clem hung her head low and sniffled, “I want my Daddy.”

“Oh come off it. It’s just me around, and those aliens don’t give a shit about your bare tits bouncing around. Pick up a gun and let’s get off this fucking ship.”

When she didn’t move Somah tugged her back by her sweaty hair and slapped her across the face. The stinging pain worked. She got moving, picked up a gun and got into survival mode, masking her face the way Charon taught her.

“Charon,” she said his name like a reassurance - a port in the storm. He'd have figured a way out of here. Come hell or high water he'd find a way to get back her. She just had to channel him. Do what he was always telling her to do and all would be fine. 

She was going home. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------

It was easy to open up the doors for him, and it was fun seeing him blast away the aliens. None of them knew what hit ‘em and when she crawled out to give him a victory high-five he rose his palm so she could slap it with all her might. 

Charon was really cool when he was blasting them away and all. 

He looked like a war hero from the holotapes the way he stood around after the carnage, looking untouchable. He was a good find. Maybe if he liked killing them so much he’d stay.

When Sally led him through the hallways she made sure to take the route where most of them were. He seemed to like the killing after all.

“Hey! You should throw a grenade in the next room, there are like five of them! It’ll be really awesome.”

He did as she asked. Most of them exploded, their limbs flying off and smacking against the walls. When she crawled out Charon was standing over one of them - it was trying to breathe, and one of its arms was missing. Charon blasted it’s face right off, coloring the floor with chunks of green. He needed a cool catch-phrase when he did stuff like that. She’d think of something for him later.

“Wow, that one’s head was full of junk wasn’t it?”

He grunted, standing still and waiting for her. She stepped from one foot to the next deciding if she should lead him around the cryo lab before taking him to the rooms, but maybe that was selfish. His girlfriend was probably really bored anyways. She hoped she was as good at killing as Charon was, maybe she looked just as cool too.

“Alright!” she declared, balling up a fist, “follow me but stay close! Things could get hairy. You need all the protection you can get.” 

She crouched low, and crawled through a tight little tunnel on the floor - it smelt like hot metal. 

A bundle of wires was already torn open, and as she’d done a bazillion times before, she pushed the gray and white wire together, their shredded ends sparking. She heard the door ‘swish’ open and crawled out the other end, meeting him on the other side. But there were already dead aliens on the floor. She didn’t think they’d been here already. No..

Charon was observing the corpses carefully. 

“I don’t think your girlfriend needed your help, Charon. Maybe she killed these ones already.” She pointed at the messy green floor and a caved in head.   
Hands on her hips, Sally looked back up at him with a frown. “I didn’t even get to watch.”

“Clemmy” he rasped, looking around the area with weird eyes that look worried but hopeful. 

“So what does your girlfriend look like?! Does she look like you?” she asked pointing up at his face. It’d be cool to see a lady-Charon. Maybe just as tall, like an Amazonian woman from the Grognak series. 

“No,” he said, still checking their surrounding, “and she’s not-”

“Oh hey! Did you hear that!?” Sally could feel the chatter coming off the walls, “It sounds like yelling.” 

She hopped up on the tips of her toes and darted down the hallway. 

“Follow me!” She leaped over the corpses, evading the pieces of green parts. Their insides were so yucky looking.

Charon’s big lumbering footsteps followed her. Stopping just short of the turn at the hallway she put a finger to her lips, shushing him when he stopped behind her, bending into a low crouch. 

He smelt like blood this close. Weird. 

Sally shrugged and peered around the corner. There was a naked lady and another one that looked really rough, she had skin as dark as space. The naked one was pretty cool looking too, she had a bunch of bruises over her and her boobies were bouncing when she walked. Maybe she was Charon’s girlfriend, but the other one looked more like Charon if he'd been a girl.

When the dark lady lifted her weapon and screamed, “They’ve got fucking ferals on this ship!” Sally looked back at Charon, his head was poking around the corner, his eyes really wide. She pushed a hand to his face and shoved him back around the corner.

“It’s rude to stare at naked ladies Charon!” she hissed, skulking, “Didn’t your Mama teach you any manners...”

The naked one lowered her weapon while the dressed one aimed high.

“I saw it! It’s a ghoul!” she growled, “Come on out!”

She tried to push Charon back, but he was really strong, he could drag her across the floor even if she grabbed onto his leg. 

Charon rose his gun high and suddenly the naked lady was smacking the other ladies gun away, shouting at her, “No! Charon!”

Grown-ups were weird, and she didn’t understand a single thing they were shouting about. It all sounded so stupid. Why would they shoot each other? The aliens were the only ones that sucked.

She tugged on Charon’s leg harder this time, almost lifting herself off the floor. When he gave her a quick glance Sally eyed the ladies at the end of the hall suspiciously. 

“Hey,” she hushed so only he could hear her, “maybe you shouldn’t shoot them. I think I saw the naked lady when she first got here. They might have messed with her head a bit too much. She screamed a lot.”

“Clementine,” he breathed, leaving Sally behind to drag herself by his leg. One of them had to be his girlfriend. She grinned in accomplishment. Her mission was a success then! His leg forgotten she skipped ahead of him, but he picked up his pace and he outran her by a long bit. Reunions were so much fun, she didn’t care he was winning. This was the most exciting thing she’d done in a long while!


	5. Reunion

“Charon!” Clem screamed - the sound of his name set his nerves aflame, making his heart pound and his stomach churn. Visceral sensations and emotional urges. He wanted her, suddenly and ferociously. The feeling passed just as quickly, but something tickled - a fleeting desire for intimacy - in the back of his mind. A mind that felt too open and vulnerable. In a very physical and real sense his mind was more open...empty, needing to be filled. 

Everything was unnerving; ungrounding.

When she shouted his name again he felt his eyes burn. He couldn’t stop to wonder why, he had to get to her. She was bloody and naked, but that didn’t matter. Something worse had happened to her. What had they done? Suddenly the dozen or so corpses behind him didn't seem near enough to satisfy his bloodlust. Clementine looked like hell. 

Charon ran for her; sprinted for her until he was slamming into her, wrapping an arm around her to keep her from falling. She was hot against him, shaking and naked. 

Naked. If he got closer to her he wouldn’t look down at her; wouldn’t gawk, so he hugged her to him all the tighter, inhaling hard with relief. She was alive, and for a moment that was all that matter.

Sally crept next to him, he could feel her hand tugging on his leg again.

“Why’s she naked? Is this your girlfriend?”

He shook her off, not unkindly and pulled away from Clem enough to take in the look of her bruised face. She had pink tears in her eyes, one fat drop finally spilling like sludge. The blood stains down her lips and chin was dried. A dark bruise of mottled yellow and purple sprung up around the cut on the ridge of her nose. Broken.

“Your nose is broken.”

“Kinda worth getting out don’t you think?” her lower lip started to quiver, and a rash of red stained her cheeks, but she didn’t comment on her nudity, instead she lifted both hands to his face, looking at him like…how she often looked at him, but ten-fold. Had he never noticed it before until now? Kiss her. Another abrupt thought that died instantly, leaving a rash of confusion in it’s wake. If these distracting demands kept springing up he’d be rendered useless as an enslaved mercenary. No, not enslaved anymore.

“Damn, Charon,” Clem whispered, thumb on his sharp cheekbone. Her touch sent his scattered mind into a brief space of peace; another strange emotion fluttered inside him as she gazed up at him. His eyes closed as her thumb brushed up above his brow.

“How the hell are you here? Fuck. What did they do to you?” Clem asked, feeling the clean scars on his temple. 

“I could ask you the same,” he countered raggedly. She had a pin-sized dot of red at each corner of her eyes, small bruises haloing them. The sizes of the drills he’d had the horror of seeing and feeling.

“I don’t remember,” she mumbled, looking down, her hands sliding off his face, “I puked on my clothes. It was like fucking acid, Charon. Sour milk and acid.”

He knew what she was referring to, but it only led to more questions, and they didn’t have time for those now. Instead, he let her go and dropped his gun to the floor, undoing the latches on his armor with quick precise mechanics, shucking off his jacket. Even as he helped her into the leather, he couldn’t help but look as her breasts bounced while she rose her arms into the sleeves. He’d wondered what she looked like naked, and he was oddly ashamed he couldn’t look away from her now. The short thatch of hair between her legs made his stomach tighten, but luck would have it his jacket fell to her thighs, even after he tightened the belts around her figure.

“They took something out of my brain,” he told her, handing her back the gun she’d dropped on the floor and picking up his own. He gave a derisive look at the dark-skinned woman beside them, eyeing her critically before Clem spoke up.

“Somah,” Clem eyed the woman, “this is Charon. I wouldn’t get comfortable comparing him to a feral again if I were you.”

That stoney timbre was back in her voice as she walked off, holding her alien gun in a ready stance. The little girl in her was gone, and back was the resolute woman he’d come to admire, though that admiration was starting to rear it’s head as something else.

He nodded at the Somah woman, seeing her brow arch, a short grin curling her plump lips.

“Ghoulie got himself a damsel in distress. Hope that gets you some pussy, asshole,” and at that she walked off, standing straight behind Clem who was crouched down beside Sally, pushing back the little girl’s hair and whispering to her. Sally was grinning and nodding enthusiastically at whatever she’d said to her. He bristled momentarily as his obvious savior status was forgotten but stepped over to them regardless. Sally jumped up and leaped over to him, grabbing the leg of his pants.

“Lift me up! I’m gonna crawl around in the ceiling. I know a shortcut!”

\-----------------------  
That Clementine lady was like some big bad butt sister she never had. She'd fixed her hair clip the same way Mommy used to, even. Which truth be told made her a little sad. She missed her family even if they argued most times. Even Timmy, that butt head, she missed him too. Sally almost started wondering what happened to her real sister but she laughed it off as Charon shoved her into the vents. 

It smelt sour up here, but that was alright. 

She crawled quietly across the hallways, taking a sharp right at the filter junction just before the vacuum panels. There was a hard drop, but she tucked in her skirt and slid down with a ‘whoosh!’ of sound. It was fun. 

She poked around at the woe bundle, tried a few that only made her lights flicker until she hit two red and sparks burst between her fingers. 

“Bout time.” That dark lady, so impatient. 

Sally tapped at the corrugated vent panel as soon as she spotted those big boots of Charon's. 

“Thanks, Sally,” he told her, crouching down to unscrew the panel. 

“You got it, Grognak!”

That seemed to make him smile a bit. Maybe he was as much a fan of the comics as she was. Timmy always hated it when she got a new issue before him. Minus the skin, Charon reminded her of the Barbarian even if he was wielding a shotgun and not an axe. Oh well, she thought, peeling across the room to the next console panel. 

“Oh shoot, this one's a goner…” she mumbled, tapping at the normally bright red button. No power? But that was silly. They always had power running even in the part of the ship she'd never seen anyone. 

Clementine came to bend over beside her, those big goopy eyes searching the area. She was pretty even if the aliens messed her up bad. 

“What's the gameplan, Sally?” She asked softly. 

Hmm, Sally purses her lips, twisting away from the console, tapping a finger to her chin. What to do now? No teleporter meant They'd switched them off, if They switched them off They did it cause having them on would mean...so They knew they'd escaped. Obviously. 

“The Aliens turned off the teleporter. They're these really cool yellow portals that take you to the different parts of the ship. Everything's set up like islands. It's pretty awesome...well, when they work.”

“There's got to be a manual override,” Charon said, standing there tall and ready with his shotgun in his hands. They were safe here, he didn't need to be so tense.   
Clementine straightened up beside her, looking back at Charon, “Don't look at me, for all I know the override could be on the side of the ship. In space.”

“Oh, it is,” Sally told her, nodded as seriously as she could. 

“What?” Charon asked in the same breath and Clementine and Somah. What? She looked at the three of them, nodding again. 

“Yep, I've seen them do it a couple times when they do resets and stuff. It's like three switches or something on the top of the ship.”

“Fuck,” the dark lady cursed.

Sally watched Charon release his shotgun quickly, aiming it at the floor with a loud, monstrous snarl. Clementine raised her hands, “Okay, alright. This is fine. Maybe...maybe, Sally,” she turned to her, “maybe you know another way to access the console.”

“Yea...there's no power. All I know how to do is push wires together…”

Charon walked up between her and Clementine, “Is there a way you can get me to those switches?”

“You've got to be kidding,” Clementine whispered, taking a step towards Charon before stopping short when he sneered at her. 

“There is only one option left. Unless you want to start rubbing two sticks together.”

Sally giggled, “They've got. Real life Captain Cosmos in a freezer on the upper deck.”

All three of them raised their brows, well except Charon, he raised whatever he had left on his face but it still made one heck of a sight. Worse came to worse she could fit into one of the Aliens suites. She'd always wanted to see what space felt like. Her sister had bragged about how cool it felt to get sucked up from their beds that night. Sally always hated how heavy a sleeper she was. Missed out on so much cool stuff. 

Clementine looked annoyed, before sighing, “Fine. We get the suite and we flip the switches. How hard can it be,” her nose scrunched in pain before looking over at Charon with a weird type of glare, “You sure did pick a great time to develop a sense of humor you know.”

Sally watched Charon smirk at Clementine before he turned to the dark lady, “You coming?”

Somah, that was her name, she just shrugged and frowned, “Only option. Right, Ghoulie?”


	6. Action Hero

Like pictures from her history books. 

They were frozen, perfectly captured in time. Clem couldn't help but stare, that quizzical tick taking over her frantic thoughts for the moment. She could feel Charon closing in on her, the heat from his reaching palm staining her before he even touched her. It was this manic drive for answers to the unknown that got them in this mess. Would he ever forgive her for being so stupid? So reckless. 

He'd been right the first time they'd officially met ‘you'll be my last employer’. She'd be the one to get him killed. How she hadn't already was merely luck. Or the opposite. Whatever those things had done to her - to Charon, maybe they'd have been better off dead. 

“This isn't the time,” he growled low in her ear, his large palm encasing her elbow. He jerked her away from an immaculately preserved Cowboy, ranger hat and all. She swore she could have sat there and counted the bristles on his jaw if they had the time to spare. But they didn't. No time. He was right. 

Charon pulled her back into him. The solid, hard line of his body was hot against the cold in the room and reassuring but…

“Well, fuck me,” Somah marveled, tapping her knuckles on the thick, misty glass, “these stiffs look as ugly as the ghoul.”

Clem frowned, “Don't be shitty, we've got to find the suit so start looking.” 

“Ya weren't this bossy when it was just the two of us,” Somah remarked lowly, sneering. 

Clem ignored her and tore herself out of Charon’s grip, shaking the warmth off to check the compartments along the walls for anything telling. She could hear Sally muttering something in a whisper to Charon, but she couldn't make out his reply. 

After a few minutes, Sally darted past in a blur of blonde and pink. Coming up with four empty lockers, Clem slammed one with a spark of rage, exposing the short inquisitive form of the little girl. 

For a moment Sally frightened her...

“The suit’s not in there ya’ know,” she sang, stomping beside her with a huge smile. The little girl’s face was beautiful. Maybe at one point she herself had looked like that when she was a kid. No life-threatening worries yet caged all the same. 

“Well, then,” Clem smiled, feeling her lips crack, “where is it?”

“This way.”

Clem followed, hunched over, feeling her raw stomach protest while Sally took her by the hand to the center of the room. A double row of cold cylinders flanked them on either side. 

“Captain Cosmos,” Sally gestured pointing to one feisty tube on the left, it was crusted over with a thin crackle of ice, like a Salisbury steak thawing out. She leaned forward, cut her hand down the glass and saw through a blurry miasma of ice. A dark faceplate. A helmet. An astronaut…

“So we really did make it into space on our own…” Clem marveled, unable to look away as Charon stood behind her, grunting. 

“Some did,” he rasped, “looks like this one was part of the famous missing Theta Three.”

“What was that? A sky raid or somethin’?” Somah asked, pushing hard against Clem's shoulder to get a better look. More like a space mission, she thought wildly.   
Charon snorted dryly, pointing to a dripping plate mid-height on the freezer, “One of the many teams we sent out during the Space Race. America couldn't have China sending more men into space than us. This bastard was all over the news for months.”

Clem listened intently. Charon had never talked about himself before now, not the least bit about the world before the war. She'd asked him about it in more ways and tones than she could count. This was...a rare moment. For a second she forgot about everything and shifted around, looking up at a stone-faced Charon, staring with narrowed milky eyes at the frozen figure before them. 

“What did they say happened to him?” She asked carefully. 

Charon’s eyes flicked down to hers, something in his features softening momentarily before he looked back, frowning deeply, “Doesn't matter, we need that suit.” He nodded down at Sally who was swaying back and forth absently. 

“I think this one's dead,” she informed them but stood up on her tiptoes at the glowing panel regardless. 

At that Charon’s mouth twisted in a mean look, “He wasn't going to keep it, anyway.”

 

A rancid smell hung like rain clouds as the pressure vacuum released - a mist of freezing and then warm and cloying air gushing out from the freezer. The smell...she took a few shaken steps back, hiding behind her palm. 

Everyone started hacking. The stench overwhelming for a good minute until the vents replaced the air enough to focus. 

The astronaut lay slumped in its coffin, the face plate dripping with condensation, reflecting a thousand tiny versions of the four of them staring dumbly at the sight.   
“That smelt worse than orgy night,” Somah joked, sneering in utter disgust at the steaming corpse. Definitely dead, if the smell didn't give it away then the telltale lack of movement did. Charon should have hope he’d be alive. What did any of them know about space suits?

“He's kinda short,” Sally whispered, tapping her foot in the cold puddle of defrost around their feets. 

“It’ll do,” Charon said, trying to step around her. Clem pushed a palm to his chest, ignoring the hard plane of muscle with a set frown.

“Are you kidding?” She said, “there's no way you'll fit into that thing. Have you seen how fucking huge you are?”

“Clem,” he started, eyes soft as he stared down at her. He was too expressive now, it almost made her feel bad for yelling at him.

“I'll go,” she told him, pressing her palm harder into his sternum when he all but snarled at her, “that's an order.” But something in him shifted when she said that; something raw and human and...emotional. Clem watched him glare at her, square his shoulders and straighten his spine. The word he gave her in return was laced with hatred. 

“No.”

“...wha-”

“I said. No,” Charon rasped darkly, “I’m going and you can't stop me.”

She didn't it that way. Orders...they were the last resort with him. but he said no. How could he have? “What did they do to you, Charon?”

He looked about ready to tell her, but remained silent; stubborn. This wasn't the time for this. He wouldn't fit in the suit. But she would. 

“Charon,” she whispered his name softly, gently, watching the callous facade slip at his name spoken in such a way, “I'm the one who got us into this mess. Please, let me do this. If we're gonna get home you have to let me help. Let me, please.”

He said nothing, just stared at her for a long while, his eyes shifting minutely along her face, catching her eyes every second or third glance. When he finally nodded, tight-lipped and unhappy, she smiled. They were a team. So what if he had more notches under his belt than she did. Today, right now, she was gonna be the one to get them out of this mess. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charon watched her shuck off his jacket. This time he managed to keep his gaze above her shoulders though from the shake in her limbs and the lack of modesty he didn't think Clem was worried about him taking a peek at her curves. It was more out of his own self-respect that he kept from looking downwards. 

She was breathing in counts, keeping herself calm and collected. 

Before today, or whenever the time was, he'd forgotten what truly feeling anxious felt like. Sure, he knew the emotion to an extent but it was more of an observed emotion than something he ran with when it crept up. Now, though, he was checking his own breathing as he watched Clem step into the rank suit. 

The corpse of the astronaut was laying in a corner. With nothing to cover it, they simply ignored it. 

Sally was sitting on a cargo box, something old and splintered in ancient wood. Like a crate. She watched, kicking her legs back and forth while that Somah woman pushed a foot up on the wall beside the little girl, picking her fingers as if they were dirty. 

“Like a glove,” he heard Clem comment as she wiggled her fingers deep into the rubber gloves. The suit sagged around her shoulders but it fit perfectly on her hips and legs.  
Arguing with her about getting himself in that suit had been pointless. Charon could see that now. 

He didn't want her out there, he thought, but knowing his desire was because of something other than the contract scared him. Fear; more different shades he was unfamiliar with. 

Once they were home safe in that shoddy shack in Megaton he was going to drink until the world tripled and sleep for a week. 

Clem picked up the large helmet, shaking out the fetid drips of...hopefully water. She'd need an extensive course of antibiotics from Doc Church when they got home if she wasn't already swimming in super bacteria.

She was too fragile. There was no way he was letting her go through with this.

“Charon,” she chastised, turning the helmet in her hands with a wry smirk, “the suits already on, so don't think about talking me out of this.”

“Fine,” he bit, taking the helmet out of her tiny hands, watching her round face open for him. She searched his face for something, didn't find what she was looking for and smiled anyway. 

“See you on the other side,” she whispered. 

Yeah, he thought as he covered her face in immaculate, tinted glass. See you on the other side…

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sally held the shaved wires between her fingers, waiting for the go ahead as Charon turned Clem over in his hands, looking at her through that space man’s helmet. She looked so cool, it made her wish she had her Daddy’s camera to take a polaroid with. 

Charon ran a thumb over one metal clasp on the suit, and let her go. It was kinda romantic and gross. But cute. It was cute, she decided, bouncing on her bum with the wires, ready and blaring to go. 

“Alright, Sally,” Clem said, voice robotic through the helmet, “blast off.”

The wires sparked and the door opened. She watched Clem step in and give a thumbs up. She bashed the wires again and the door sealed tight.

A big green button blinked on the door console, which hopefully meant the coast was clear. It was hard to tell with these aliens. Sometimes the red buttons were good buttons and blue and green meant danger. 

Worse case scenario...she exploded, but that wasn't too likely. 

“Be safe,” she heard Charon rasp before he put his thumb on the button, blanketing Clem in two jets of white smoke. There was no crazy alarm, just a ‘shhhhhh’ sound as the small window clouded with white. 

After a few minutes, the fog cleared and Clem was gone. Space, blackness like the kind she saw outside her window was all she could see. It obviously unnerved Charon, who paced a few times before making his way over to the locked door. The deactivated teleporter sat there in darkness while he sat and waited. 

He looked like he hurt, and Sally wasn't so sure how to deal with boys that hurt. When she tried to help Timmy that one time he sprained his ankle on the sidewalk he told her he hated her and wouldn't talk to her for a whole weekend. Boys were weird like that. 

Somah remained against the eject wall. The lady didn't say much to Sally, but that didn't mean she didn't like being talked to. It seemed best to leave Charon alone. 

Boys needed time to think things over longer than girls did, most times. In the meantime, she could talk to Somah to pass the time.

It was a long walk across the hull to the first switch. A long time to wait...


	7. That Bottomless Pit

Space was...big.

It was stupid that such an elementary word was all she could come up with when faced with something as astounding as the galaxy, the universe, and infinity. There was no time to waste, but Clementine took a minute to gaze back at the copper-colored ball just peeking up underneath the lustrous hull of the spaceship. Aliens. Space. Ships. The cold bleak fact of it all made her eyes ache. She blinked, took a long breath in and a long breath out and took her first full-fledged step out into nothing.

It took forever. Her brief pause before beginning her journey across the hull seemed pointless. Each step felt like it took minutes rather than seconds. She’d had plenty of time to solidify the sight of Earth in her mind. It was ugly for the most part, but there were patches of emerald and something the color of blue in places that gave her a fragile feeling of hope. So, it wasn’t all destroyed, wondered. Gazing.

Clem chewed on that tiny ounce of hope until she made it to the hatch. 

With a gradual turn, she looked back and found the start of her walk only a few hundred feet away. She must have been in the void for an hour at least. 

It was easy opening the hatch, so much so that it nearly opened itself. 

The sink down into the hatch, however, made her arms and stomach tense and strain, opposing the lack of gravity required more muscle than she’d realized, but when all was said and done she was floating in a contained room, dull blue lights flickering. It wasn’t until she closed the hatch, twisted the seal tight, that she realized she hadn’t heard a single thing since she’d left Charon and Sally behind…

No sound in space, it would seem.

She must have read that somewhere - in one of those antique textbooks of her Father’s but...she couldn’t remember much else in that moment. After they were back home she was going to drink; drink and gorge herself on sweets and sleep for a week or more. How else did one recover from a trip through hell and back?

Hell, she thought. What qualified as hell?

When she finally ran her thumb over the right indent, her flat boots hitting the floor and gravity weighing back down on her, she nearly toppled. A door slid open suddenly, exposing a long hallway with red pulsating dome lights. Again she was reminded of that purgatory she'd read about in Underworld's pamphlets. The, by now, regular sense of trepidation settled deep down in her stomach, rolling where that acid milk had been. Whether it was a raw hole spreading inside her, bleeding fresh, or panic surfacing, she wasn't sure. It was an appalling feeling either way.

The hallway eventually turned into a spacious room and just as Sally had said there was a dead teleporter just past a bank of skinny, black terminals standing vigilant in the middle of the room. Clementine hugged the wall at the end of the hallway, eyed every corner of the room, every surface and unfamiliar inch until she was relatively certain no one was watching. Then, ever so carefully she removed the spacesuit and stepped into the so-called observatory.

What was there to observe, thought? She saw nothing of importance, except the teleporter. She squeezed along the walls on her way to the flat dead dome in the floor until she was running her fingers over the lattice. There was something there - but when the light abruptly expanded, blinding her - she couldn’t recall touching anything noteworthy. It didn’t matter though because the teleporter came to life; buzzing and glowing and pulsating. She hesitated, leaning against the lattice, ready to plunge in. 

No...

Scenarios of being split atom by atom then reassembled as someone else that looked and acted exactly like she caused her alarm. Clem took a step back, shivered and then after talking herself up, tried again. 

Behind her, a door opened; spilling short, angry clicking aliens. They all had weapons and they all glared at her with those huge reflective eyes. 

She sucked in a scream as her foot slipped and the world disappeared in a flash of hot white light. Time ceased. Her blood went cold and something metallic lingered on her tongue as she blinked, seeing Charon watching her through a pane of thick glass. His off-blue eyes widened and for a long second, they stared at one another, both shocked before the door shook as he barreled a shoulder into it.

“Wait! Charon,” she yelled, seeing clearly that he couldn’t hear her. She could see his mouth opening and closing; snarling speech she couldn’t hear either. Frantically, she searched the panel along the wall, looking for anything that would open the door. She didn’t think about what would happen when the door opened but it must not have been that Charon would ram into her, just barely missing the teleporter behind her. 

They clashed together to the floor, a tangle of limbs. His weight was suffocating and overwhelming for only a second before he surged up to his elbows, staring at her in a strange mix of panic and disbelief.

She was about to say something; maybe yell at him or scream or kiss him, but the yellow room suddenly filled with red and that shrieking click became one, then two then more and more until she was hauled up by Charon's large, cruel hand and dragged away. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because when she looked back it was to greet the arch of electricity, aimed right for her face.

Once again, time stopped and her blood ran cold.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

White light greeted him, as did the straps holding his limbs down. The back of his neck throbbed in tune with his sluggish heartbeat, right where the cattle prod zapped him over and over again. He could still feel the thrum of electricity racing up and down his body, seizing his muscles into sharp cramps. Every inch of him had been paralyzed - the feeling hopeless and new; raw. Seeing Clem out cold just out of his reach had made the feeling even acuter. 

Charon vaguely recalls seeing Sally eying him, hidden in a tiny air duct from above, putting a finger to her lips.

A soft whine broke the silenced, bounding off the walls to jerk his neck in its direction.

Clementine.

She was strapped down beside him, asleep he hoped, her lips were parted and spit was drooling out of her mouth. Quite, wheezing breaths would ease past her lips as he watched her. Then her brows furrowed and that scratchy whine puffed out in an exhale. He jerked against the straps, but they only tightened further, slowly cutting off the blood flow to his limbs the more he moved against them. When he shook again, red hot rage surging under in his gut, the table skidded. He knew well enough that if he ended up still strapped to the table on the floor nothing could be done from there.

A voice whispered and his heart skipped, turning to Clem. He saw her eyes flutter open and her lips move but he heard nothing come out. Her pupils were huge when she turned them to him and for the first time since waking up he realized she was naked again and...so was he.

A whirling sound above her caught his attention. Above them were two snake-like machines, a needle tipping each one. They gyrated back and forth as if rearing up to strike. They were like the ones before, and he roared, jerking and thrusting against the restraints. Horror. He felt the fear again and with it the sensation close to nausea but not it.

“Fuck...fuck! fuck!” Clem was screaming. “Charon! No, no not again! Daddy!!”

Her screams, cries, and pleas made him sick and he felt his muscles tearing against the binds. He just needed to get free - to get at her before something happened. Anything happened to her. He couldn’t...

The snake machine above her was lowering a thick needle into her neck, releasing something just above her collarbone with a steaming hiss. She seized, eyes so wide he could see white all around her black pupil and he shouted and jerked the table until it was rocking with him. 

Suddenly the straps around her released and she floundered off the table, shaking her head as if something was stuck in her ear and panting like a fucking dog.

Then her skin grew shiny with sweat and pink rose up on her flesh like a stain. When her head flipped up and she stared at him, there was a terror in her eyes; wild animal fear. She was out of her mind with it and for an instant, her utter fright gave him calm. He could see his goal. He could breathe and see the road ahead. There was a plan and he knew how to follow it.

“Clem, get me out,” he ordered. When she made no move he shouted at her, watching as she just sat there on the floor on hands and knees. 

His eyes darted across the room. There had to be an exit, something they could use. He had a sudden lapse of thought, like a prick of pain, and then a hiss filled his ears and a needle was plucked from his neck. Just as it had happened for her his straps were gone and a rush shot into his palms as he braced himself on the floor.

“Clem?” he questioned as she gazed heatedly. Then his blood raced to his groin and he couldn’t help but arch a brow at the sight of himself; stiff and pulsing.

He had one fatal moment of pure, clean thought to realize what was about to happen, but then he was scrambling to close the distance between them, grasping at Clem’s legs, spreading them wide before thrusting himself inside her.

She gasped. Pained? Gratified? Only a small part of him cared. She was so hot her insides felt like they were melting him within her; legs spreading wider and fingers curling against his arms, scratching like a strangled cat as he rammed himself inside again. Burning. She was burning him. 

There was a part of him that could understand what he was doing - the vigorous thrusting, the nails gouging into the thin skin around her ribs, the saliva he could feel leaking out the side of his mouth - and was deeply ashamed of what was happening, but she felt so good and her hands were all over him, caressing and biting in with her nails. He couldn’t stop if he’d actually heard her screaming ‘stop’. This was what he wanted, for longer than he actually understood. Not to only fuck her but for this sort of passion to be returned to him.

She grunted and moaned, grinding against his slippery cock, bending her head back to howl in satisfaction. He bit at her exposed neck and she mewled, jumping up so hard against him he fell back on his ass, her hips never stopping. Slapping her down on his lap, burying himself so deep inside his eyes rolled back in his head - he saw the aliens looking at them through the wide pane of glass when his vision focused momentarily. 

A dozen of them stared, some taking down notes as they both fucked like wild animals on the floor. Clem didn’t seem to notice, too busy rocking her hips quickly in his lap, sheathing his cock in rapid motions; grinding down and grappling against his shoulders.

Her bare breasts scraped against his jaw with each bounce and he tasted the sweat under one of them, the taste igniting his brain like a car explosion. He growled and took a nipple between his teeth, sucking the flesh into his mouth; hands clutching at her back as her insides quivered around him. He barked and bit at the ball of her shoulder when her head fell forward. Charon grabbed her hips so hard his fingers went numb. And then - like the shot from a gun - he exploded inside her. 

Like a dying fish, he gasped and planted his feet on the ground, leaning back to buck upwards, thrusting her up; breasts bouncing so quick it made him dizzy to watch. A hiccup sound left her throat with each thrust until he finally felt his balls empty, moaning so long his voice left him. Only then did he slow, coming to a stop with deep rasping breaths. 

She fell on top of him, her chin slapping on his sternum, but the pain was so dull within the massive amounts of pleasure he merely grunted.

Then a needle slid into his neck again and he was shoving Clem’s face into the cold floor, fucking into her from behind with no sound but her urging cries to guide him on.

More, more, more…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you have the time please leave me a kudo and or a comment. I do so thrive off them. <3 More soon!


	8. An Afterwards

This was worse than the time Timmy had that surprise for her and it was really just his dog humping another dog. She could see enough through the openings of her splayed fingers, but most of it was blocked out. The aliens did weird stuff in here, but this was way weirder than that one time they reanimated a bunch of heads without their bodies...or when they had that cow turned inside out. Why were they making Charon and Clemmy make babies when they grew everything in the tubes anyways?

He was embarrassing himself with all those weird noises he was making, and it looked like whatever he was doing to Clemmy should have hurt. The look on her face wasn’t one of pain, though, that was for certain. 

The noises of them doing that stuff echoed in the vents. It was really a good thing they were so loud because this way she didn’t have to worry about being all sneaky like before. The aliens didn’t hear her when she crawled around in the vents above them. Not a single one looked up when she stuck a hand through the bars to pull a bulb of wires loose right above the control display. 

Now, which one was it again? Blue or yellow? It really had been a long time since she’d found something new to mess with. It was the blue. 

Something small exploded in yellow sparks on the panel, lighting one of their hands on fire. Though she’d picked the wrong wire, it was pretty hilarious to watch the burning one dart around in a circle, wave his sizzling finger in the air and yap on and on until one of those red suits slapped the flame away. It didn’t seem too happy. That was one of the mean ones. She didn’t like those guys at all.

She had to wait awhile longer until they were too worried about what Charon and Clemmy were doing to pay her or the wires she was plucking any mind. By the time she pinched the right wire, cutting the power she could see the empty vials lined up - the vials they’d been using to inject her friends with. There had to have been a dozen of them. 

Normally she didn’t get angry - sometimes she felt annoyed or grumpy but this was worse than that. She was mad. Charon and Clemmy were sure to be sore after all of that roughhousing they’d done and it was all the red suits fault. 

Next time she was gonna make sure to pluck a few wires to its cyro pod. First chance she got.

With the controls out she slid back into the ducts, hopped down the evac tunnel and found the now dark room. A yellow light flashed every few seconds and Sally saw Charon on the floor, on his back with Clemmy sitting on his lap, rocking back and forth.

“Psst…”

They didn’t seem to hear. Clemmy’s arms were shaking, hands on Charon’s chest. In the dark, she could see their chests expanding and contracting rapidly as if they were breathing super hard, but they didn’t make any more of those loud sounds, just raspy ones.

“Hey!”

They both jerked towards her but in the dark, she couldn’t see their expressions. Peering over the ledge she could see the aliens leaving, some shaking their heads and others trying to bring the controls back up. Fat chance! She laughed, crawling out of her hiding spot when the aliens finally cleared out, lowering the metal door over the glass windows. 

“S..sally…?” That was Clemmy, though she sounded really tired. Then she heard Clemmy moan when Charon grabbed her hips, moving her out of his lap. He seemed really careful with her now. It was weird since she was pretty sure Clemmy was going to be bruised when the lights came back on. Adults were weird about that stuff they did in private. Maybe she shouldn’t mention it either.

“So were they making you have babies?” but she was curious and it’d be kinda cool if they had babies. Maybe she’d get to babysit them or something when she got older. That would be pretty cool. She could show them around the ship to. Maybe then she’d have friends her own age to play with…

“Babies…” Clem didn’t seem to understand. And Sally watched her feel her way around the place with a strange look on her face. She looked really tired, but she couldn’t blame her for that. They’d been pretty busy until she saved them after all. Only when Clemmy started to sob did she stop to think if she was hurt. But when she got close Clemmy pressed her away and shook her head.

Charon was still on the floor, his head in his hands, fingers digging into his temples.

Sally gave his leg a little kick, “Hey...you keep doing that and you're gonna crack your skull. Silly.”

It didn’t get her a laugh but it got him up and moving. She helped them find their clothes and even found a couple gel tubes for them, but only Charon took it. Clemmy didn’t seem right, but when she tried to ask her Clemmy only smiled. But even the smile didn’t seem right either.

“The Captain was watching you guys earlier, through the glass. We’re close to the place with the big teleporter and the buttons.”

“How many of them were outside,” Charon asked her and she answered seven, but two of them had been workers and they were harmless. It wasn’t their fault their boss was a bad guy.

“Stay low,” Charon said and she rolled her eyes, standing as tall as they were crouched. Clemmy made a sound and she noticed Charon’s eyes go wet. It wasn’t good to point out if boys cried, so she didn’t. Timmy hated it when she pointed and laughed at him that one time he scraped his knee in the driveway.

Once Charon and Clemmy were shoved up against the wall of the window, heads a few inches below the glass, Charon gave her a nod and she went back into the vent, shoving the grate back. The door controls were down a way and a bunch of greasy cables blocked most of the width, but she could slip through them with a bit of wiggling, and wiggle she did. They were warm and slippery, leaving stains on her clothes and greasy patches on her skin, but after a few minutes she found the bundle of exposed wires and started pulling them out in different orders, shoving the frayed ends back in and blah blah blah. Eventually a little blue light formed behind the panel and she heard the door slide open through the metal walls.

It took longer trying to get back out from the way she came. Wet, slurping noises, bangs and growls could be heard through the walls. She could hear the clicking and screeching of the aliens and more than once she got stuck, focusing on the sound more than where she was twisting her body. 

When she got out she felt sore and it was quiet except for some muffled crying sounds. Sally wasn’t exactly sure if she was supposed to come out now, but a peek showed no one was in the dark room where Charon and Clemmy had been.

“I’m sorry,” she could hear Charon in the other room, the control room, and the sound of Clemmy whispering. She was sobbing too. Sally couldn’t help it. She knew she shouldn’t look but she couldn’t help it. She liked Clemmy and maybe Charon had hurt her accidentally... 

She saw the dead aliens and their busted heads leaking on the floor, saw Charon sitting on one of the cargo boxes with Clemmy between his legs, holding him around the neck, shoulders shaking. Charon’s big, ugly hand was on her back, rubbing a line down her spine and he kept making these noises like he was ‘shushing’ her. It seemed to work, even though Sally knew it would have never worked on her - those were noises for bad ponies and stuff.

When Clemmy stopped crying, Charon pushed her back slowly, looking over at her like he was making sure she was alright. He looked at Clemmy like Daddy used to look at Mommy. His thumb stroked her cheek and he mouthed something that Clemmy nodded her head too, and then Clemmy was leaning in to kiss him even though it looked like it hurt him for her to do it.

She must have gasped or something, because Charon’s eyes darted over to the corner, saw her and pulled his mouth from Clemmy’s quicker than she could dart back around the wall. She was in trouble now. It was never a good idea to spy on adults when they were kissing...or doing other stuff. Never a good idea, but that rarely ever stopped her.

Sally shut her eyes and hugged her legs as she heard Charon’s feet on the metal floor, heavy firm steps - like Daddy’s.

He came around the wall staring down at her with one of his large hands on the door frame. “You alright?” and it sounded like her Daddy after she burned her finger on the oven that one Thanksgiving.

“I am…” she whispered, holding her breath when he just stared down at her.

“I need you to stay where you are for a few minutes. Can you do that?”

She nodded, putting her hands on her knees like she always did when she was waiting on Timmy to get done counting down. She could wait as long as it took for Timmy to give up looking. Charon had no idea how long she could wait. If Clemmy needed an hour even, or if they needed two hours!

She could do it.

She could wait.

\---------------------------------

There wasn’t enough time, she told herself. Get over it. Deal with it when they had a moment, but it was all she could think about as she searched the bins and cargo boxes for their things, stepping over fresh alien corpses.

Even when Charon barricaded the doors with a slap of his palm, growled low at the door and put his back to her on his own search, she bit her lip and kept looking.

Her body ached. Each thud of her heart was also a thud in her knees, her palms, her hips...especially between her legs where he’d fucked her half a dozen times.

This was not how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to be back home, drinking and winding down from the trek from D.C. She was supposed to wait until the liquor had relaxed him, give her some courage and maybe sit down in his lap and kiss him. He was supposed to chastise her for being too young or not knowing anything when she insisted - and she was supposed to fuck him on their couch to show him what she felt wasn't just boredom and hormones. 

She’d sort of had it planned out in her head for months, and now this.

There was a distant hum of desire still lapping like a wave down her belly, making her wet flesh feel less ruined and more eager. If he’d grabbed her by the hips now, while she unloaded strange things from this container, she wouldn’t have objected in the slightest. He felt good, better than she’d hoped he would...and she’d never been fucked like that in all her sordid fantasies. 

“Found your- my jacket,” she heard him declare; stony and unreadable once again, faltering only on the last syllable.

She took it from him with a shaken smile, shrugging it on and feeling it’s heavy weight bear down on her; comforting. It didn’t smell as strong now as it had done, not now that she was covered in him. The warm leak of his semen from between her legs set her heart racing again.

“Charon...would yo-”

“Try the bin over there,” he pointed to his right and she shuffled away. Her stomach was a cluster of fleshy knots and each time she tried to speak he was throwing stuff across the room and grumbling loudly to himself.

“Charon,” she insisted, feeling her stomach drop when he walked over to the other side of the room, upending more boxes. She followed like she was attached to an invisible string tied around his waist, hovering so close she knew it bothered him, but she couldn't find the desire to give him his space. The warmth of his presence was intoxicating, and if he wouldn’t indulge her need any longer then she would at least soak up as much of his body heat as she could.

His carmine muscles, covered in the thin, bullet-holed shirt, bunched up under her gaze. When he moved it was with a stiff motion. She could taste his annoyance on the tip of her tongue, only taking a step back from him a second before he reared on her, hands like a vice on her shoulders, giving her a short, ferocious shake before growling in her face, “I need you to either look for our guns or sit down. This isn’t a game you play with me now, not now! We can figure everything else out when we’re home. Do you understand?” 

She didn’t understand, but his tone made her feel sick. Pain washed down over her skin, much like when she awoke from a night of heavy drinking. She was suddenly so very tired and his fingers pushing down against her skin and throbbing in her bones ignited a passionate rage in her chest.

Clem wanted him to fuck her again, but that was foolish. 

Charon shook her again and she hissed, feeling a disconnect from her mind and body for one long minute - in that minute she tore herself from his grip, pulled her hand back and punched him in the chest. The first strike she hadn’t experienced fully enough, so she did it again until he was cradling her wrists in his hands, so gentle it made her swallow back another sob. The heat from his hands practically burned.

“I hit you,” she muttered. That deep, unwelcome pity she’d felt when first waking up here blanketed her again and she sobbed nasally into the short distance between them. His fingers tightened around her wrists, squeezing reassuringly before his thumb stroked the back of her hand, “It doesn’t matter. But we need to get out of here. We need to get home.”

She nodded, sniffed up the snot trying to leak out of her nose and went about searching for their weapons.

He found them a few minutes later, sealed in some metal refrigerated cabinet that hissed when it opened. Charon’s shotgun was suspended in some strange blue light, along with the grenades and the buffed alien gun she’d stolen from the first alien she’d slaughtered. It was all there, even Charon’s belt buckle with his knife still sheathed in its holster.

After this there was nothing standing in his way...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment if you have the time. This is mostly done so updates will be quick.


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